News & Views in 2021

Land use change, livestock production and human encroachment into wildlife habitats drive zoonotic emergence. Quantitative analyses of horseshoe bat populations provide evidence for how food systems may contribute to hotspots of potential zoonotic spillover.

Landscape diversity is critical to enhance agricultural sustainability and resilience. A realistic and achievable route towards adding complexity and biodiversity into agricultural landscapes may be through precision conservation.

Current global nutrient availability poses a barrier to the complete shift from conventional to organic food production. Policies must be developed to overcome nutrient limitation and increase grower experience with organic production methods.

Climate engineering can alter the radiation budget in different ways than greenhouse gases and possibly benefit crop yields.

Publicly funded technological innovations, strategic policy implementation and private sector upscaling have facilitated greater demand and lower costs for certain foods in the past. Can lessons be learned for transitioning towards healthy, sustainable diets?

Agriculture is the main contributor to global water scarcity but not all diets contribute equally. Modifying what, and how much, we eat could reduce the impact of our diets on global water resources.

Food contains thousands of different trace natural compounds, many of which remain largely unmeasured and undocumented. The network medicine approach sheds new light on how polyphenols, among the most important of these trace compounds, impact human health.

An assessment of global inequality in agriculture, food and health indicators between 1970–2010 reveals that significant progress has been made in some countries, but more is needed to achieve a truly equitable food system that delivers for the diets, nutrition and health of all people.

Transgenic maize for human consumption and livestock feed has the capacity to increase yields for a variety of farming operations in Africa and the potential to ensure food security in the face of climate change.

Without breakthroughs for adaptation, rising temperatures in the hottest wheat-producing environments, such as Sudan, could reduce domestic production, increase dependency on imports and threaten food security for millions.

A study of the grain trade during 2020 indicates that policies to protect supply chains must be enacted to avoid supply chain shocks such as COVID-19 and locust swarms exacerbating food insecurity in global regions that rely on food imports.